Uber loses London licence
LONDON: Uber was stripped of its licence to carry paying passengers in London on Monday for the second time in just over two years, pending an appeal, over a “pattern of failures” on safety and security.
Unauthorised drivers were able to upload their photos to others’ accounts so that, on at least 14,000 trips, a driver other than the advertised one picked up passengers, the regulator Transport for London (TfL) said. The ridehailing firm immediately said it would appeal. The process is likely to include court action and could drag on for months, allowing Uber’s roughly 45,000 drivers in London, one of its most important markets, to keep taking rides despite its licence expiring on Monday.
TfL said it had “identified a pattern of failures by the company including several breaches that placed passengers and their safety at risk”.
SINGAPORE INVOKES FAKE NEWS LAW
Singapore political figure Brad Bowyer on Monday corrected a Facebook post questioning the independence of state investment firms following a government request, in the first use of the country’s new “fake news” law.
Bowyer used “false and misleading” statements alleging the government influenced decisions made by state investors Temasek Holdings and GIC, according to a statement on the official government fact-checking website.
WEB FOUNDER PITCHES ‘INTERNET CONTRACT’
World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee released an ambitious rule book for online governance — a bill of rights and obligations for the internet — designed to counteract the growing prevalence of such anti-democratic poisons as misinformation, mass surveillance and censorship. Google and Facebook are backing it. The product of a year’s work by the World Wide Web Foundation where Berners-Lee is a founding director, the “Contract for the Web ” seeks commitments from governments and industry to make and keep knowledge freely available—a digital policy agenda true to the design vision of the 30-year-old web.